Gordon's 'creation' races to top

NASCAR - Nextel Cup Ford 400

If not for Jeff Gordon, Jimmie Johnson might be struggling with a mediocre team.

November 18, 2007|By Ed Hinton, Sentinel Staff Writer

HOMESTEAD -- Jeff Gordon brought this on himself. He is at the brink of being beaten for the Nextel Cup by his own creation.

Otherwise he might be cruising into today's season-ending Ford 400 with the championship clinched, rather than 86 points behind, in the last gasp of the Chase at Homestead-Miami Speedway.

And Jimmie Johnson might be struggling with some mediocre team -- if he were at Cup level at all -- rather than gunning for the most dazzling finish to a championship in NASCAR history, a modern-era record fifth straight win.

It was Gordon who spotted Johnson's raw ability. Gordon who touted him to team owner Rick Hendrick. Gordon who agreed to take a personal stake in financing a whole new branch of the Hendrick Motorsports empire, to be built around a driver who didn't have much of a resumM-i except for the sheer talent Gordon saw.

All autumn, as Johnson and Gordon have dueled at the top of the Chase, they've been bombarded with questions about how a friendship could remain intact during such fierce competition.

It's not nearly as simple as a friendship. Gordon cannot be resentful of his own brainchild, Johnson's No. 48 branch of the team.

The fateful day was an obscure test session for Busch Series cars at treacherous old Darlington Raceway in South Carolina in 2000. Gordon wasn't even driving that day. He was there to coach Ricky Hendrick, the owner's son, who would later give up on a driving career and then be killed tragically in the Hendrick team plane crash of 2004.

Out on the track, Gordon noticed some driver in a mediocre car, but "running just the right line, carrying a lot of speed," Gordon recalled this week. "You would have thought he was a guy who'd been around for a few years, who knew the track. But when you found out it was his first time ever there, that was impressive."

The younger Hendrick knew the driver's name -- fellow by the name of Jimmie Johnson, nice guy, former off-road racer from Southern California, driving for the upstart Herzog Busch team.

Later that summer, Johnson was getting offers from Ford Motor Co. to move away from Chevrolet. He knew that Gordon, early in his career, had gone the opposite way, leaving Ford and going with Chevrolet via Hendrick.

"I just needed to share my situation with someone, and the opportunities that were being presented to me were similar to what he had gone through," Johnson said. "And I remember thinking, 'If I could just have two minutes with him, and he could give me some worldly advice on how he made his decision, that would help.'"

Johnson asked for two minutes. Gordon gave him a career.

Gordon had gone to Hendrick, who "said, 'Well, if you want to put your money where your mouth is, then we'll do it,'" Gordon said. "I said, 'I am.' "

Gordon would give up part of his compensation in return for a percentage of the new team built around Johnson. And it was Gordon who went out and got Johnson's lucrative sponsorship from Lowe's. On entry blanks, Gordon is listed as Johnson's car owner.

"I really thought if we put him in the kind of car and equipment that I had been in for all the years, that he could have the same type of success that I had," Gordon recalled. And now, "To me, he has the capability of having more success."

Indeed, since Gordon and Hendrick brought Johnson to the Cup level in 2002, he has won more races, 33, than any other driver. Only Tony Stewart has two championships in that time frame, and Johnson stands to equal that today.

Even at the brink of another defeat by Johnson, Gordon wouldn't change a thing. And so, "the only guy I was going to recommend," Gordon said, "was a guy I thought was capable of being great."